Part of a roof is in a yard after a sudden storm ripped it from a house Saturday night, April 12.Samuel Wilson | MLive.com

GENESEE COUNTY, MI -- Kaelyn Goss huddled up in a closet just large enough to fit herself, a dog and cat inside a closet at her Sharp Road home after hearing the wind begin to roar around 7:15 p.m. Saturday evening.

“It just sounded like a plane was on top of my house,” she said, placing herself on top of the dog and blanket over the pets as they rode out the worst of the storm, with parents Roxanne and Al Flynn on the phone. “I turned back and I could see outside. I didn’t know the roof was in the front yard. I felt like I was in the Wizard of Oz.”

Debris lay in the family’s yard, a scene replayed at several other homes in Byron, Gaines and Argentine Township Sunday, April 13, where tree branches were bundled along the roadside, chainsaws buzzed to section downed trees and others were left picking up the remains of what was left following sudden, strong storms.

Roof torn off home in Genesee County19-year-old Kaelyn Goss said it sounded like a plane had landed on her Sharp Road home as a storm rolled through and tore off half the roof as she huddled in a small closet.

While several residents said they’d seen or heard of funnel clouds in the area, Debra Elliott, meteorologist for the National Weather Service, noted, “There were definitely no tornadoes yesterday. We didn’t have the circumstances for that at all.”

The storms downed power lines, cutting electricity to more than 8,000 Consumers Energy customers, and close parts of I-75 and 475 atter lines fell across I-75.

Sheri Piwowar is one of those who thought she’d seen a funnel cloud in the sky near her Linden Road home, shutting the shades and then hearing a breeze and watching lawn furniture, a child’s playhouse and 14-foot trampoline raised off the ground and hurled into her front yard.

“It was like a train sound,” she said, standing near a section of 20-foot section of tree that had been sliced off a larger trunk.

Sharon and Greg Matkovich also believed it was more than just straight-line winds, describing it as “swirling, but it wasn’t concentrated” and dark clouds tapering off to gray as they reached closer to the ground.

A large barn on their Beers Road property was toppled during the brunt of the storm, which ripped up and tossed 31-foot-long sections of paneling off the roof and leaving it mangled in a path across their property, into a neighbor’s yard and sections blown hundreds of feet into a nearby field.

“All we can do it start over,” Sharon Matkovich said. “There’s not much else you can do."

It’s a sentiment Byron residents Kathy and Larry Drury have unfortunately grown familiar with in recent years.

After replacing the roof around six years ago to a historic building housing Kathy Drury's real estate business on Byron Road, they were in touch with an insurance adjuster once again Sunday after half of the roof was flung over by winds onto a nearby car wash.

“My grandson was here,” said Kathy, sitting on the other side of an empty desk, files and computers having been taken out after the storm to avoid further damage. “He said he was sitting in a chair and he immediately hit the floor. He said he’d seen daylight and it scared the heck out of him.”

The building, constructed in 1920, once served as a basketball court and auditorium, Drury said, recalling seeing Punch and Judy puppet shows and recitals featuring Christmas carols on a stage where boards hung down.

Damage in Byron extended to the school buildings, where hunks of insulation littered a hill on the side of the middle school and yellow tape was strung up across the entrances to prevent onlookers from getting closer to the damage.

Jennifer Herbstreit, principal at Byron Elementary, said the district will be closed Monday, April 14, but she could not comment on what may happen moving forward. Students were set to return to classes Monday following spring break.

“We’ll be making a plan in the next couple days,” she said.

For Roxanne Flynn, who had family gathering to help pick up the pieces, she was still trying to figure out what to do in the storm's aftermath.

"I just don't know what to do," she said, with husband Al Flynn noting the family would have to find a place to stay until they could fix the roof. "We were in the path of destruction last night."